Maud McLure Kelly

Maud McClure Kelly (July 10, 1887 – April 2, 1973) was an American lawyer, suffragist and historian. She was the first woman to practice law in the state of Alabama and worked for the Alabama Department of Archives and History after her retirement from law.

Biography Maud McClure Kelly was born in 1887 in Oxford, Alabama, to Richard Bussey Kelly and Leona Bledsoe Kelly. Her father was a lawyer and both of her parents were strong supporters of the Democratic Party and the Confederacy. She graduated from the Noble Institute, a girls' school in Anniston, Alabama, in 1904, and moved with her family to Birmingham in 1905. She graduated a year later as the third in her class and was admitted to the Alabama bar in October 1908, She relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1919 to work as a federal attorney for the Department of the Interior, and returned to her practice in Birmingham in 1924. She closed the practice and ended her legal work in 1931.

The Alabama State Bar's Women's Section gives the Maud McLure Kelly Award annually to a "female attorney who has made a lasting impact on the legal profession and has been a pioneer and leader within the state."